Thursday 12 July 2012 11.07 EDT
First published on Thursday 12 July 2012 11.07 EDT

In a electrifying speech the other night, one of Britain's most respected voluntary sector figures declared the "big society" to be, amongst other things:

as much use as an ashtray on a motor bike

The phrase was oddly shocking, not solely for the anger and bitterness infusing it but the gaping sense of betrayal it evinced. David Robinson, the legendary founder of the Community Links charity in east London, who uttered it, is not a flippant man. Nor is he (as far as I know) one to get furious in public, but here he came very close.

Robinson's path over the past two years, from big society optimist (he was one of the 16 handpicked social entrepreneurs at David Cameron's original Big Society launch at Number 10 in May 2010) to big society unbeliever has been interesting to watch. I've tracked his gradual disillusionment here, and here.

I've always felt Robinson was careful not to burn his bridges with Cameron: his previous warnings were framed as "critical friend" interventions. He hoped, it seemed, that the coalition would come to its senses: that it would realise that its War on Deficit had to be accompanied by careful, strategic, long-term public investment in the kind of community support and preventative work that surely underpinned any big society agenda. He offered practical advice, a way forward.

Robinson has clearly had enough of the widening gap between big society rhetoric and the cuts-dominated reality. It's hard not to conclude, from the atmosphere at that meeting and elsewhere, that it is a feeling shared by many in the voluntary sector.

In his speech, Robinson decried the "random demolition" of the State (this from a man with no love of the Big State), the "cosmetic" attempts to reform public services, and the short-termism of the supposed "solutions" to long term questions of rising demand and shrinking resources.

He added:

I've used up 20% of my time and still not mentioned the Big Society. Why? Because if it ever meant a thing it doesn't matter now, not in the disadvantaged communities that I know best. This is a Britain that isn't broken and it never was but it has been battered… battered by the storms in the global economy and battered by a government who have chosen to pass on a disproportionate share of the sacrifice to those with the most limited capacity to bear the burden.

The government, he said had made choices. They had chosen to dismantle legal aid, cut welfare benefits, and to load the burden of the cuts onto the poorest communities. Choosing welfare cuts over tax rises was a political choice, he said, a legitimate and possibly publicly popular one, but one that was entirely incompatible with big society.

Its not how I understood the [big society] promise on the table at No10 on that May morning two years ago. Then it was admittedly vague but vaguely hopeful. Today we see it for what it was – as much use as an ashtray on a motor bike

Two years ago he believed he had detected in the earliest iterations of big society the "whisps" of new thinking about the nature of society and the relationships underpinning it. But if ever they existed outside a "speech writer's conceit" those whisps had now been swept away, he said.

The big society must be judged not on the few piecemeal social programmes it has been midwife to (big society capital and social impact bonds were actually conceived under the Labour government, he pointed out) but by the health of wider society. Cameron may still believe passionately in the big society vision, but such ideals were impossible to reconcile with, for example, his notorious welfare speech last month, suggested Robinson.

There was discussion afterwards about whether the meeting was a "wake" for the big society. If it was, it was conducted more in the spirit of anger rather than sadness. Civil society may have been cowed in the last few years, but as any faint expectations of cash or reform have been comprehensively dashed (and many vital charities face extinction) that lingering deference may be over.

Asked what he thought the voluntary sector might look like in three years time, fellow panellist Karl Wilding, the NCVO head of policy and research, suggested that as state cash drained out of the sector we would see a fresh emphasis on campaigning. Caroline Slocock, director of Civil Exchange suggested the voluntary sector needed to fight back. She wondered if the third sector had been "in danger of losing its soul".

If it had, the big society betrayal may just be the point at which it rediscovers it.